Nine lives—nine people treated in intensive psychoanalytic treatment- are described from within. Their emotional lives, internal struggles, conflicts and anguish are vividly described and understood. Each individual’s story is unique and yet these people are tied together by their shared humanity—the human struggles that the sensitive reader can identify with and appreciate. “Man is more human than otherwise,” an aphorism put forth by the famous psychiatrist Harry Stack Sullivan, underscores this commonality of human experience.
A detailed description of each patient’s intensive treatment invites the reader to enter into the patient-therapist relationship, with its intricacies and intimacies, and to then speculate on what is ultimately helpful and what “cures” in the therapeutic process.
Click Here to Read: Chapter 1: Joan from Nine Lives by Newell Fischer.
Newell Fischer, M.D. a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst of adults, children, and adolescents, is a Past-President of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Fischer is currently a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, and Chairman of the Education Committee of the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He served as President of the Professional Staff of the Pennsylvania Hospital, Director of Psychiatry at the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital, and President of the Margaret S. Mahler Research Foundation. He is a Training and Supervising Psychoanalyst at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia and has written and lectured extensively on “what is therapeutic in psychotherapy.” Dr. Fischer lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.